Niharika Sathe, a 34-year-old internal medicine physician in New Jersey, first heard the fertility rumor from another doctor.

The friend confided that she would decline the coronavirus vaccine because of something she’d seen online — that the shot could cause the immune system to attack the placenta, potentially leading to miscarriage and infertility. Sathe, who was early in her pregnancy at the time but had not told anyone, spent the next few weeks scrutinizing information from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and calling trusted experts to investigate the report.

In the end, she determined the rumor had no basis in fact, and both she and her friend wound up getting the vaccine. But the experience left her rattled.

“That kind of misinformation is really scary,” Sathe said, adding, “It has enough science to sound potentially plausible.”

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